Spotify's New Tool Lets You Find the Most Dramatic Part of a Song

To quote the Beastie Boys "Mmm...drop!" While it's hard to define how our favourite songs deliver the emotional sucker punches that leave us teary or force our feet onto the dance floor, there are some tried-and-tested dynamic tricks that song writers use to add drama to a tune. And now, using Sonic Science™, Spotify has put together a tool that will let you spot the most dramatic moment in the songs from its streaming library.

Where is the Drama plays back any of 20 million songs from the streaming service's catalogue, highlighting just the moment where they hit their dramatic peaks and visualising the rise and fall in decibels along a chart.

“The app grabs the detailed audio analysis for the song from The Echo Nest," explains Paul Lamere (director of developer community for The Echo Nest at Spotify) on the Spotify Insights blog.

"This includes a detailed loudness map of the song. I look for the part of the song with the largest rise in volume over the course of a 30 second window (longer songs can have a bit of a longer dramatic window). I give extra weight to crescendos that culminate in louder peaks (so if there are two crescendos that are 20dB in range but one ends at 5dB louder, it will win). Once I identify the most dynamic part of a song, I pad it a bit (so we get to hear a bit of the drop after the build)."